Ethiopia is widely recognized as the birthplace of coffee, has a long history of coffee cultivation, and is also Africa's largest coffee producer. Its coffee is loved by many coffee enthusiasts for its rich fruit flavors and floral aromas.

At FrontStreet Coffee, there are several coffee beans from Ethiopia, and among them the most well-known is Huakui coffee beans, which are now already at Huakui 8.0, meaning this is already the eighth year of Huakui. So why exactly is this coffee bean so famous?

This coffee bean rose to fame in 2017, when Ethiopia was holding the Taste of Harvest competition (TOH) organized by the African Fine Coffees Association (AFCA). When DW Coffee Company took part in this event, it submitted a natural-process coffee bean produced by its Buku Abel processing plant (then named "Hambella"). This coffee won the championship in the natural group that year with its intense berry aroma and creamy texture.

According to the traceability information at the time, this coffee bean came from Ethiopia's well-known Guji region, in Guji's sub-region Hambella, from coffee beans produced by the Buku Abel processing plant, so at the time it was named after its sub-region.

The reason this coffee bean was called "Huakui" is that in the same year, this champion bean was spotted by a green bean trader in Beijing, who named it "Huakui" and launched it on the domestic market, meaning "leader of a hundred flowers." In addition, this "Huakui" was spotted by a competitor, who selected it to take part in the World Brewers Cup (China region). Although it only won runner-up, it beat a host of competitors using Geisha coffee beans, gained public recognition, and offered high value for money, so it became famous in one fell swoop.

After "Huakui" coffee beans became famous, DW Company, in order to meet market demand, began adding 5 coffee processing stations in Dimtu town, the core production area of Hambella, and also began purchasing coffee beans produced by nearby villages to produce "Huakui" coffee beans. It is said that by this time DW Company's annual production of "Huakui" coffee beans had already reached tens of millions of tons.

However, coffee is a crop, so the quality of coffee production is affected by factors such as the climate, rainfall and fertilisation each year, and subtle differences in temperature, humidity and sun-drying conditions during coffee processing also affect the final flavour. Therefore, from 2018 onwards, even if DW grows and harvests in the same region and processes the coffee beans at the same processing plant, the flavour will differ to some extent from the champion "Huakui" coffee beans of 2017.

Thus, in order to distinguish it from the original version, domestic green coffee bean traders named each subsequent year's lot "HuakuiX.0", with the lot released in 2018 called "Huakui 2.0", the 2019 lot "Huakui 3.0", and by this year, 2024, the lot is "Huakui 8.0".This year Qianjie'sHuakui 8.0, once brewed, has tropical fruit flavours such as dried mango, citrus and jackfruit, a full juicy body, a rounded mouthfeel, a black tea-like sweet aftertaste, and rich layers.

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